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A bicycle built for Paris sightseeing

BY MARY SCHMICH | CHICAGO TRIBUNE

June 1, 2008

Renting a Velib' is tres chic in Paris, the city of bikes (Associated Press / May 30, 2008)

My first encounter with the self-service rental bikes in Paris was like my first day in college French class: I was in over my head.

It was 8 a.m. one Sunday last November, an hour when no one is out in Paris except street cleaners, cafe waiters and a few old people with dogs barely bigger than croissants. There would never be a safer hour for a tourist with jet lag to try a new Velib'.

Velib' is a hybrid word, a mix of velo, which means bicycle and liberte, which means freedom. Other European cities, including Brussels, Copenhagen and Barcelona, have similar programs, but none is on Paris' grand scale.

The Saturday I arrived I'd watched Parisians breeze along the boulevards on their bikes, neck scarves fluttering. I watched them slipping bikes in and out of docking stations as blithely as you'd take money from an ATM.

But on this Sunday morning, a block off the Boulevard St. Germain, I stood alone and baffled. The bicycles, a soft pearly gray, glinted in the sun. I studied the screen on the payment kiosk.

I couldn't make it work. Not in French. Not in English. I felt the way Americans most hate to feel in Paris - like a tourist.

I was about to slink away when two French women ambled up. The women squinted at my Visa. Voil ... le probleme. It didn't have a puce, the little gold security seal on French bank cards. But one of them had heard that an American Express card without a puce might work.

I tried mine, and it did. Soon I was on my way.

Another man showed me how to adjust the seat, shift the gears and use the bike lock. It was all purely friendly, but as I pedalled off I understood how the stations had gotten a reputation as places to pick up more than a bicyclette.

A bicycle changes your angle on the world. On my sturdy but sleek bike, I rolled one way past the old railroad station that's now the Musee d'Orsay, past the Eiffel Tower. I biked the other way, past Notre Dame cathedral and the river barges. I'd seen all of these too many times to count and yet they all looked new.

I rode in narrow side streets and in the bike-bus lanes that line the boulevards. I spent a while on the highway next to the Seine River, which on Sundays is closed for recreation. I rang my handlebar bell just for fun.

Morning shaded into afternoon. The streets grew busier. At some intersections, I yearned for a helmet, but a helmet would have been as rare and conspicuous as an American flag.

Finally, at dusk, after a stop for tea, I plugged my bike back into a station and collected a ticket from the kiosk proving the return.

That night I told a French friend about my day on the Velib'. I may as well have said I put ice cubes in fine wine.

"You kept the bike all day?" she yowled. "The Velib' are not for touring! They're for short trips. Getting from place to place. You're going to get charged a fortune." She explained how it was supposed to work: You ride one bike for no more than 30 minutes, put it back and take another later. You can do that all day for a euro; the computer kiosks remember you and your credit card.

My Velib', she guessed, would cost 50 bucks.

For a few moments I simmered in an existential dread. Then I had a revelation: I didn't care.

I've been to Paris dozens of times and even lived there for a while, but I'd never seen the city the way I saw it on my Velib'.

When the AmEx bill came, the charge was, in fact, a surprise. One euro. But I wouldn't count on that kiosk to make such a nice mistake again.

For more information: en.velib.paris.fr (click on How Does It Work? at the top for directions in English).